*CFP* "SCREENWRITING FOR VIRTUAL REALITY MEDIA", EDITED COLLECTION

Calling for chapters for an edited collection for proposal to the Palgrave Series on Screenwriting devoted to the concepts, practices, challenges and opportunities associated with narrative screenwriting for virtual reality media.

In recent years, a new wave of virtual reality technologies has transformed the notion of immersive narrative-based storytelling, creating powerful opportunities for the creation of embodied works that foreground the experience of the viewer/user. Drawing upon the visual language and tropes inherited from film and television, video games, theatre, video art, historical and contemporary art/architecture, VR technologies allow writers and creators to reimagine relationships between narrative agents and audience and to explore new forms of screen-based interactivity. Such writing calls for new considerations of ‘story world,’ point of view and viewer agency. Writing on screenwriting in the digital age in 2014, Kathryn Millard observes that “screenwriting is a living art, constantly in transition” uncovering innovative forms of development, collaborative ecologies, and digital writing tools. Emerging scholarship published in the Journal of Screenwriting expands this notion for the VR context (see Dooley 2018; Larsen 2018; Ross and Munt 2018) and now calls for the undertaking of further research to illuminate this exciting and dynamic area of screenwriting for virtual reality.

This edited collection will explore how VR technologies such as 360-degree production, game engines, and development software continue to evolve the notion of writing for the screen, defined by innovative and creative approaches and/or divergences from screenwriting/screenplay practices associated with prior media. What can emerging screenwriting practices in this new domain tell us about the future of screenwriting – and the screenplay redesign for immersive contexts?

We seek reflections on creative approaches, analysis of narrative strategies and case-studies in screenwriting, scripting and the screenplay for virtual reality media. Chapters may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:

• Auteur VR case studies of ‘trailblazers’ 
• Artists’ Moving image VR ‘writing’ for the gallery and installation spaces 
• Cinematic virtual reality ‘CVR’ approaches 
• Writing interactive elements 
• VR screenwriting ethics- what experience are you offering? 
• Accessibility and appropriation in VR storytelling 
• Character positioning and point of view- writing in the first-person 
• The spatialised screenplay- formats and templates 
• VR script development practices 
• Directing attention within a 360-world- creating agency for the viewer/user 
• Conceptualising immersive storytelling models 
• VR spinoffs from traditional film/television projects 
• The embodied VR screenplay 
• Writing the real- VR documentary 
• The influence of film and/or theatre grammars on VR writing

 

Submission Guidelines:

Please send an abstract of 350 words, along with a brief bibliography (3-5 sources) demonstrating the proposed chapter’s theoretical foundations, and a short biography (100 words) by Monday 21st December 2020 to Dr Kath Dooley (kath.dooley@curtin.edu.au) and Dr Alex Munt (alex.munt@uts.edu.au).

Please include “Screenwriting for Virtual Reality Media” in the subject header, and copy both editors on initial submissions and any further correspondence.

 

Chapter Guidelines:

Once abstracts are collected, they will be proposed to series editors and the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, for a collection to be included in their ‘Studies in Screenwriting’ series.  No payment from authors is required.

After abstract acceptance from the publisher, selected authors will be asked to write chapters of 7,000 to 8,000 words including references by an agreed-upon date to be determined (depending on publisher’s timetable) aligned with the Palgrave house style for the series.